METEMPSYCHOSIS
by fancy2na
Summary: When victory at the cost of his ally isn't a victory at all. A revised version of my other oneshot, "I'll Follow You Into the Dark." Can be read independently. TW: Suicide and Major Character Death.


_"And if he fails... I too ought to die here with him!"_

With a seismic crash that sends debris flying through the air and tremors throughout the vicinity, a final victory determining strike is placed, and the battered bodies of Monkey D. Luffy and Donquixote Doflamingo fall gracelessly to the ground.

Law, bleeding profusely from where his arm had been torn off and haphazardly sewn back on, watches the events unfold both intently and painstakingly from the sidelines.

"Mugiwara-ya!" he calls out desperately, but when the surrounding dust settles, all he sees are the crumpled forms of the fallen in the midst of the battlefield.

 _No... no..._ Law thinks, refusing to believe the lies his eyes are telling him.

 _Not again._

Though his energy is near depletion from the dozens of bullets he's already taken, Law uses his better arm to clumsily drag himself to where his friend lays, the difficulty akin to treading through a sea of quicksand.

In the back of his perception, he hears an ominous, albeit defeated snicker. Though clinging to life by the thinnest of threads, Joker's snide voice echoes teasingly through his ears. His feathered, beat up form is merely a blur in Law's peripheral as his senses hyper focus on the person before him.

He nearly collapses in his effort to pull himself to Luffy. He settles beside the boy with heaving breaths, and forces down the consuming, disheartened feeling within him. He doesn't check Luffy's pulse, nor his heartbeat.

Law is a doctor; he knows a dead body when he sees one.

 _Mugiwara-ya..._

Interestingly, there is a wide, brilliant smile stretched across Luffy's face, and the sight elicits a memory of something Cora-san once told him.

 _"The Will of D. will surely bring up another storm."_

Because only a true D. smiles in the face of death. It's those who inherit that will who change the world, and fabricate the beginnings of an entirely new era...

Monkey D. Luffy, like his valiant brother, and the king of the pirates himself, has brought up more than a just a bought of gusty winds.

He was the catalyst for an entire revolution.

Law cannot bring himself to cry over his ally. He's cried himself dry in his younger days. The despair he feels, however, is something that's intensified without the conventional means of escape. He reaches out his trembling hand to intertwine it with Luffy's smaller, immobile one.

He takes in the sight of their joined hands, and can't help but regret the words he permanently inked across his knuckles so long ago.

DEATH

"Everyone you love dies before you," Joker chokes out from behind him. His voice is unsteady as he too lets his life slip away, like smoke drifting up into the clouds.

"You lose."

Law ignores his pathetic jibes, even when Joker begins to cough violently. Blood pours through the fallen man's mouth and stains his mangled cape of plumage. He wheezes and chokes until abruptly, he stops.

And just like that, Law knows that Joker's life has ended too, and that therefore Cora-san has finally been avenged. This one man's death was all he had ever wanted, yet Law doesn't feel relieved or satisfied like he had always imagined. He instead feels even emptier, as Luffy's sacrifice has ripped apart his heart in two bloody halves. The agony is a thousand times more painful than what he felt kneeling before Cora-san's body all those years ago.

No, it was not at all what he had yearned for, but somehow he knew deep down in his heart that this was inevitable.

Because Joker always takes what's precious to him.

 _Luffy_

Law has never been able to describe the relationship that they shared. To be honest, he didn't quite understand it. 'Ally' seemed too distant a word, and 'friend' never fit entirely right either. Luffy had a huge ship full of friends, and Law a submarine full, but the connection between the two captains was something completely different in nature. Something much bigger.

It was as if their lives were bound together, like a twisting of the threads of fate, orchestrated by the sheer amount of times that they've saved each other from the beckoning hands of death again and again. It was a phenomenon both peculiar yet extraordinary.. something that Law had never expected he would be worthy of experiencing in his limited and vengeful life.

 _But this time,_ Law thinks, his chest constricting painfully like a tightened coil, _I couldn't save him…_

 _..._

 _Or can I?_

He remembers something that Joker had said to him once. And it is this something may just change everything.

 _"_ _If wielded by someone of true brilliance, the Ope Ope no Mi has the power to fulfill one of humanity's oldest dreams. Those who call it the ultimate Devil Fruit are not few."_

The Perennial Youth Operation.

The greatest feature of Law's Devil Fruit power- that which grants the ability to give another person eternal youth.

The cost, however, is none other than the user's own life.

A burst of hope, like the blessing of downpour after a endless drought, sparks up within him.

Doflamingo is dead at last, but the invaluable price of Luffy's life has turned the victory sour. Since the annihilation of Flevance, and then the cold blooded murder of Cora-san, Doflamingo's death at his hands had been all that he thirsted for- until the fateful day Law had met Luffy.

How is it that a single person, just another tiny soul adrift in this vast and endless ocean, could so easily flip the entire world, including Law's own, completely upside down in his wake? How could he make someone who had given up completely by the early age of ten believe that there was more to life than hatred and disease?

Monkey D. Luffy was an enigma.

Now, without this spontaneous yet lionhearted boy who had somehow become his very reason for living, Law has nothing left to lose.

 _It's a long shot…. but it just might work._

"I hope that after this, you'll understand the depth of my gratitude for all you've done for me." he whispers this down into Luffy's ear, though he knows the other can't hear him.

There may be people watching, certainly some of Luffy's many friends, but Law doesn't spare them a fraction of a thought as he leans forward and presses a quick kiss to Luffy's bloody forehead.

Secretly, he had imagined what it would be like to kiss Luffy. This was nothing remotely similar to one of the many self-indulgent scenarios he had created in the confines of his head. Deep down he had hoped someday they'd share a breathtaking kiss, one so electric it would stop the world around them. Luffy, standing on the very tips of his toes, would giggle as Law leaned down and pressed their mouths flush together, Law's hands would run through ebony hair, over a well loved straw hat, and Luffy's arms would wrap around his middle, three times, four times. The embrace would be amateur but earnest, and all the while Law's heart would flutter in his chest like some sort of rescued maiden-

Instead, beneath his lips is nothing but a shell of the soul that had once sent him reeling in so many ways. A lifeless, muted body... unresponsive and empty, and oh so _wrong._

 _Not that Luffy would have ever kissed me anyways, being what he is,_ the surgeon smirks darkly, _it was wishful thinking from the start._

 _Now…_ Law thinks, gathering the remains of his strength to perform this one last crucial surgery.

He steals a glance at Joker's lifeless figure, and despite everything he still gets the chills. Doflamingo is nothing but a heap of blood-stained feathers, yet somehow Law can still hear the bastard's empty taunts.

 _"It's not going to work."_ Doflamingo goads him snidely _"You're just committing a fancy suicide."_

"Wasn't it you who said that only the strong can choose the way they die?" raising his head high, Law laughs at the man incredulously, "Now look at you."

Joker says nothing, and Law is utterly pleased that finally, finally- he's had the last laugh.

"See you in Hell." he says out loud, then turns his attention back to Luffy.

 _I could never have asked for a better way to die,_ he thinks amicably.

Law utilizes the last scraps of his energy to activate one last Room. The familiar blue aura surrounds him, and he immediately reaches for Kikoku, knowing he has to be quick before his stamina runs dry. With unhesitating, steady hands, he raises the sharp tip of his blade up against his chest, right over his swollen heart.

There are dozens of voices yelling and pleading in the background, probably begging him not to do this, but Law fixedly ignores them, and without an ounce of regret, he plunges Kikoku into his chest.

He feels a force begin to carve into him like a jack-o-lantern, cleaving the essence of his very life from his body.

An ethereal, hazy energy slowly seeps out of him, and he uses the last reserves of his strength to direct it to where Luffy lays.

"Metempsychosis!" he screams, and the spiritual substance sinks into the other's chest with fluid ease.

...

 _It's done._

Law collapses beside Luffy, welcoming death into his open arms, until the flickering flame of his life blows out.

 _This is my thanks to you, Pirate King._

Across Law's face appears a pleased, brilliant smile.

In fact, it is his first genuine smile in years.

* * *

 _Immediately afterwards, somewhere across the seas a cursed fuchsia fruit spawns curiously from the very air itself, and in the middle of the Grand Line, on a small island called Dressrosa in the New World, a boy with a straw hat and a golden heart opens his eyes._


End file.
